Really liked the episode overall. It was cool to see so many reunions happening, and one of my favorite things in the episode is how Bran will just be waiting for people like a fucking specter. The little boy also scared the shit out of me.
Some of the jokes were a little campy, but whatever. My only real disappointment with this episode is how rushed it sometimes feels. The last few seasons developed things at a good, long pace, but that's just not sustainable at this point. Things just have to get wrapped up, and there's little way around condensing a lot of it since this is the last season. Some scenes aren't drawn out to the point I used to enjoy in earlier seasons, some scenes happen so close one after another that I can't really absorb what just happened, and some scenes are tightened up a lot (I wish I'd seen more of a mourning period for Sam over his dad and brother, or of Cersei handling feeling objectified by Euron after they slept together, or of Yara and Theon talking on the boat- a lot of things).
I'm not sure any character interaction happened that lasted much longer than three or four minutes, and they happen one after another- sometimes with sorta awkward transitions between them, to speed things along. The scale of things is reducing, and that's something that's incidentally reflected in the new opening titles too. Now it's just Winterfell and King's Landing, with a lot of tight interior shots of each. It sticks out because the development of things in the earlier seasons was really what sold me on the show. But I can't rightly be dismissive of the episode (or the season, because it seems likely that'll be this way the whole way through) because there's no way to end the show without either, A) A lot of loose threads, or B) A bit of rushed execution so everything can make it into the last season.
Anyway, liked it, and I'll be watching next week's episode too. That episode was the primer for some big-time white walker mayhem, and with the precedent, they set earlier in the series, as well as the fading plot armor now that no character is being saved for 'next season,' I'm expecting a few big kills.
